Fraud allegations swirling around Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford last week drew attention to his contributions to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-St. Albans) and to House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel (D-Manhattan). A Rangel spokesman said $10,800 that Stanford contributed over the years would be donated to charity.

Why, that’s almost half. Kind of. Moderately close to almost half. OK, so it may be closer to a third. The difference, by the way, is the $25K that went to the Rangel Victory Fund – which, bluntly, I consider Rangel to be morally on the hook for if the people who he helped refuse to pay back the money*:

Texas Businessman Sought Influence in Corridors of Capitol

[snip]

Among the recipients of Mr. Stanford’s largesse is House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), who has long advocated lenient tax policies toward Virgin Islands residents and in 2007 introduced a bill to enforce a statute of limitations on IRS scrutiny of islanders’ old tax returns. That year, Mr. Rangel traveled to Antigua for a development conference partly sponsored by Mr. Stanford, who also donated $28,300 to Mr. Rangel in 2008.

“I met Stanford a couple of times,” Mr. Rangel said. “He has never discussed any legislative issue with me nor has anyone to my knowledge representing him ever discussed any legislation.”

Mr. Stanford wrote two $250,000 checks to the Democratic Party in 2002.

Plus the help that Stanford gave the Democrats with their convention last year, of course. One wonders whether they’ll donate that money, too… actually, one doesn’t. Even if they had it, they’d probably not want to waste it on the poor; it’d be much more useful to spend it on explaining why the Democrats are so much better than the Republicans when it comes to corruption.

No, by “better” they don’t want you to think “more efficient”…

Moe Lane

PS: How about you, Representative Meeks (D, NY-06)? You feel like keeping all that dirty drug money?